Identification

Title

Modeled and observed multidecadal variability in the North Atlantic jet stream and its connection to sea surface temperatures

Abstract

Multidecadal variability in the North Atlantic jet stream in general circulation models (GCMs) is compared with that in reanalysis products of the twentieth century. It is found that almost all models exhibit multidecadal jet stream variability that is entirely consistent with the sampling of white noise year-to-year atmospheric fluctuations. In the observed record, the variability displays a pronounced seasonality within the winter months, with greatly enhanced variability toward the late winter. This late winter variability exceeds that found in any GCM and greatly exceeds expectations from the sampling of atmospheric noise, motivating the need for an underlying explanation. The potential roles of both external forcings and internal coupled ocean-atmosphere processes are considered. While the late winter variability is not found to be closely connected with external forcing, it is found to be strongly related to the internally generated component of Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). In fact, consideration of the seasonality of the jet stream variability within the winter months reveals that the AMV is far more strongly connected to jet stream variability during March than the early winter months or the winter season as a whole. Reasoning is put forward for why this connection likely represents a driving of the jet stream variability by the SSTs, although the dynamics involved remain to be understood. This analysis reveals a fundamental mismatch between late winter jet stream variability in observations and GCMs and a potential source of long-term predictability of the late winter Atlantic atmospheric circulation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7h70jps

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-10-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact